My goal in mentioning the 5.25 floppy disk was to point out that the
least common denominator changes. As it does so, old least common
denominators fall by the wayside; i.e. backwards compatibility is lost.
Today's computers are not backwards compatible with 5.25 floppies, and I
don't hear Microsoft or anyone else being blamed for this. It's just a
fact of technology. Mac software is not backwards compatible with Apple
II computers. It is not obvious to me that Apple Computer has been any
more noble in preserving backwards compatibility than anyone else. I
have heard many people say Apple is actually lousy in preserving
backwards compatibility, but I am unable to determine this from personal
experience.
When I said that people using Eudora, etc. are "not getting the
benefits" I was not specifically talking about quoted printable. I was
talking about all the inter-office features Outlook has. Outlook is not
a vanilla-flavored e-mail. We chose it over other possible e-mail
systems because we wanted the features it offers.
Does there have to be a compatibility price in choosing a feature-rich
system? I think this is a difficult question. Suppose Outlook allowed
users all kinds of freedom to change their e-mail parameters. In an
organization with 1000 users trying to communicate with each other in a
feature-rich e-mail system, we would have chaos if tech-illiterate
personnel start changing their e-mail parameters to settings that
prohibit them from receiving e-mail from within the organization with
formatting the sender assumes they can interpret. It is our network
administrator's dream that every person on campus would have identical
computers running identical software in an identical configuration.
That might also be Microsoft's dream, but they are not the only ones to
have that dream. Indeed, our network administrator has taken some
freedoms away from us that Microsoft gave us.
Should the Outlook/Exchange system allow me to turn quoted printable
off? I think so. So I would say Microsoft either went too far, or they
just blundered. But I am not going to crucify them on that issue.
Should the PHYS-L software handle this okay. I think it should. But
I'm not going to crucify them either.
What confuses me at this point are the reports that some people are
saying they are sending quoted printable to PHYS-L and it is working
okay. If that is true we then I don't think we have a compatibility
problem. Rather, we have somebody with a bug in their software. If
these reports are correct, then indications would be that the bug in
Outlook/PHYS-L interaction is caused by a bug in Outlook/Exchange. But
from my interactions with other list-servers the indication would be
that PHYS-L has the bug.
Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D.
Professor of Chemistry and Physics
Bluffton College
Bluffton, OH 45817
(419)-358-3270
edmiston@bluffton.edu
This posting is the position of the writer, not that of SUNY-BSC, NAU or the AAPT.